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LiveDrive drive by: Backup biz's price hikes will kill us, say resellers

Another tough day hangin' in the channel hood

Resellers and customers of web backup biz LiveDrive are digesting its recent sweeping price changes with varying degrees of frustration. Some say they’ll quit the service and others are seeking legal advice.

As revealed last week, UK-based LiveDrive reseller Monster Cloud, which itself wholesales the online storage services to local third party sellers, passed on the new pricing to its end and trade customers.

Under the revamped structure, the £50 per year all-you-can-store cloud-based option previously offered by LiveDrive was discontinued.

Customers were told new fees included £36 per month for a 1TB online backup account for unlimited computers, plus an extra fee of £30 per month that will be charged for exceeding the cap.

The 1TB cloud storage account will no longer include online backup for free – the cost of using this will rise to £14 per month.

LiveDrive resellers formed a group on LinkedIn – now deleted – to discuss their options. One claimed:

“They [LiveDrive] are killing the reseller channel. I’ve been a loyal reseller for six years with 2000 clients. We are now forced to quit working with LiveDrive.”

Another said he was seeking counsel with a legal eagle “to see if I have a case to get some compensation for lost revenue, refunds issued etc. Anyone else want to join in a share of the costs?”

And a third LiveDrive trade customer urged “all resellers should come together and give LiveDrive a lot of bad publicity and even take them on”.

Monster Cloud told us last week that it had made “major improvements” to its website, web portal and software as a ramp of the data warehouse infrastructure.

We asked LiveDrive and its parent J2 Global to comment, and will update if/when they get back to us. ®

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